PARTY, PLAY--AND PAY

It's Saturday evening in Manhattan, and three dozen men are crammed into a one-bedroom suite in an upscale hotel across from Ground Zero. After shelling out $20 apiece to the man who organized tonight's event over the Internet, the guests place their clothes in Hefty bags for safekeeping and get down to business and pleasure. A muscular man in his mid-30s sits naked on the sofa and inhales a "bump" of crystal methamphetamine. Within minutes, he's lying on the floor having unprotected sex with the host of tonight's sex party, whose sunken cheeks, swollen neck glands and distended belly betray the HIV infection he's been battling for years. In the bedroom, a dozen men, several of them sweaty, dehydrated and wired on meth, are having sex on the king-size bed. There's not a condom in sight. "It's completely suicidal, the crystal and the 'barebacking' [unprotected anal sex]," says one of two attendees who described the scene. "But there's something liberating and hot about it, too."

This is the ugly underworld of meth-fueled sex: "Party and Play," or PnP for short, as it's euphemistically called in Internet personal ads. News that a gay meth user in New York who had hundreds of unsafe sexual encounters may carry a virulent, drug-resistant strain of HIV has forced health officials and gay community leaders to take a sobering look at the growing role crystal methamphetamine is playing in the spread of AIDS. Doctors are unsure whether the new strain is an isolated case or the precursor of a deadly new wave of HIV. But it's clear that a dangerous nexus has formed between the nation's two big epidemics: AIDS and methamphetamine abuse.

The meth epidemic isn't new, nor is it just a gay problem. After exploding in the Southwest more than a decade ago, the relatively cheap drug has spread north and east; a 2003 federal study estimated that more than 12 million Americans have snorted, smoked or shot up meth at least once. But it is in the gay community that the link between crystal meth and unsafe sex is most alarming. In a study of 1,600 men who have had sex with men, conducted by the L.A. County public-health agency in 2003-04, 13 percent said they'd used meth in the previous 12 months; those respondents were twice as likely to report having had unprotected sex, and four times as likely to report being HIV-positive. And as many as three quarters of new patients diagnosed with HIV by counselors at Callen-Lorde Community Health Center in New York each month say crystal meth played a role in getting them there.

Even before crystal became commonplace in gay sex clubs and at the roving bacchanals known as circuit parties, many men had begun to let safer-sex practices slip. The arrival of retroviral cocktails in the late 1990s made HIV a chronic but manageable disease for many, but it also gave uninfected men, especially younger ones, a false sense of security. Throw meth into the mix, and safe sex goes out the window: men high on crystal are four times more likely to engage in unprotected sex as those who aren't, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The powerful stimulant leaves many users feeling euphoric and hypersexual, resulting in binges with multiple partners that can last until the user comes crashing off the drug a few days later. Because crystal causes temporary impotence for many men (some pop Viagra to counter the effect), users are more likely to be the receptive partners in unsafe sex, where the risk of contracting HIV is greatest.

Why are so many gay men tempted to play this game of Russian roulette? Hans Kindt did it for the sense of belonging--and for the sex. Arriving in San Francisco in 1994, Kindt, then 34, was just coming to terms with his homosexuality. "I had no role models. I had to find my own way. I really didn't know anything. So I asked a friend of mine, 'How do you meet guys?' He told me the way to get into anybody's pants is to give them a hit of speed." But the pleasure came with a steep price. Within a year, Kindt had lost his job, he was homeless and he was HIV-positive. "Had there been a candid, clear, honest discussion about the drug and its dangers--not the hysteria we are prone to in this country--then I think I would have listened," says Kindt, now sober and 45.

Many agree that frank discussion is the only way to deal with the problem. Recovering meth addict Peter Staley was so disturbed by the lack of dialogue that he spent $6,000 of his own money to plaster ads on phone booths in New York's gay neighborhoods that read BUY CRYSTAL, GET HIV FREE; the New York city council has since ponied up funds to expand the effort. Authorities in San Francisco launched a media campaign against "crystal mess," even plastering the ads on coasters at gay bars. And the Los Angeles Gay & Lesbian Center has formed support groups where men can learn ways to deal with self-esteem and relationship issues without turning to crystal meth.

Step into a Crystal Meth Anonymous meeting--they now rival AA in attendance in many gay neighborhoods--and you'll hear the same story over and over. John, a graying fortysomething New Yorker who earns a six-figure salary in finance, started using the drug as a way to meet guys. At first, John would use on the occasional Friday night. Then it became every Friday. Then every Friday and Saturday. Eventually, crystal took up the better part of his week. Decimated by the endless partying, he would crawl into the bathroom at his office and curl up around the toilet, still wearing his business suit, to steal an hour of sleep. "You get tunnel vision," John says. "Your world gets smaller until it's just you, a pipe and the Internet." And, for a growing number of users, HIV.